June 27, 2013
The Association of the German Internet Industry, eco, has released Registrar Atlas 2013.
This year; the registrar study includes France, Great Britain, Bulgaria and Russia along with German-speaking countries and the Netherlands.
There's a special focus on the new generic Top Level Domains (gTLD's) to emerge soon in this year's Atlas.
The report states few domain registrars will try to get accreditations for as many new TLDs as possible. While hardly any providers reject the new gTLDs categorically, many will take a wait-and-see approach, offering new gTLDs only once they are generally available. Over a third (37%) of German domain providers rate the new gTLDs with a very high chance of success; however, demand will depend on the extensions available.
A minority are planning marketing measures to boost demand for the new TLDs. In Germany only a quarter of respondents intend to, in Austria 29 percent, and in Switzerland and Great Britain a third of registrars will carry out some targeted marketing.
On other issues; a question concerning the threat posed by search engines being used for finding information instead of domain names constituting a threat to the domain industry was asked again this year. The share of registrars seeing the issue as a considerable and great threat is now at a total of 43% compared to 20% in 2012. The use of apps on mobile devices was also still widely regarded by participating registrars as a threat to the industry.
However, concerns over the perceived threat posed by the vanity URLs of social media websites have calmed considerably. In 2012, 37% of respondents in Germany believed that they were faced with a threat or a major threat; this has now dropped to 21%.
Participants were also asked how much representation new names will be compared to the overall size of the domain name portfolio they administer in the coming year. The largest number of participants estimate this figure will be less than 10%, but some registrars expect it could be up to 50%.
The 53-page Registrar Atlas 2013 can be viewed here (PDF).
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